Poim: The Rape of the Plains
@interludedocs
September 22, 2022
Silence is Life
March 16, 2021
Pilgrimage
Snow falls outside the hotel window,
floating carelessly through the air…
and I don’t care.
The town spreads out below me:
A sprawling red brick dream,
with white capped peaks beyond.
But I don’t respond.
Crushing boredom, grueling emptiness,
purifying alienation:
This is exactly what I came here for.
There is nothing more.
The snow brings silence with it,
sinking into the frozen darkness of a Sunday night.
On these tired, sour, leaden streets,
the bitter desolation is too much to take
for very long. I return to my station:
stretched out on a bed,
gazing at a distant mountain range
or staring at a faucet in a trance.
It’s not refreshing, it doesn’t seem strange
and seductive, as it appeared in advance.
Far from the City of Refuge,
with no practical scheme,
constantly ruing the latest version
of what might have been; emptying myself
into the emptiness, negotiating the rush,
as a pick-up truck plows through the slush;
and I resign myself to another night, another day,
serving out a sentence.
I told myself I’d stay.
Outsiders here are quickly identified:
they’re clean-shaven.
I observe the bartender’s warmth
with other customers.
Surrounded by laughter,
I watch the bubbles in my beer,
shooting from the bottom of the glass
to a rapidly nearing surface, evenly spaced,
like asteroids in a primitive video game,
and leave unthanked.
On the street a creature is drawn to me:
a vicious black dog, grudgingly restrained
by an unapologetic owner.
These excursions strike me now,
as they always strike me at this point,
as being selfish and pointless.
What am I doing here?
When will I learn?
Despite all the goodwill I brought with me,
the place gave me nothing in return.
March 3, 2021
World on a String
Beneath the unforgiving staleness
of the lucky old sun,
on the sunny side
of the empty street,
what’s left of the past dries up
in the heat.
Not far from the wedding chapels
and the sea of fun,
the action drains
into a slum.
It is quieter here,
the people are thinner,
the world’s un-stringed,
and everyone’s a sore winner.
That’s life, frankly sinful: entertaining
the possibility that life might be more
than a series of missed opportunities.
Riding a lukewarm streak
into a lonely road and a memory.
Sensing the disinterest, feeling
my insignificance, made keenly aware,
in a world of burgers and fear,
of my newly minted irrelevance.
Out here, you are nothing
and the past is paste,
as the world’s indifference shifts
into fragmented waste.
From sedentary restlessness
to flaneurial nausea, pursued by
but eluding grace.
Days of futile transit
redefine my sense of wonder.
Manifesting without the emptiness
within, between lesser known ruins,
in a promised wasteland
of lost opportunities.
When I catch myself unawares,
in the November of my years,
I’m hardly even there,
and I have never been so tired
of talking to myself.
January 27, 2014
Letting Go
In a constant state of choking down bitterness.
Getting it all down in the hope of exhausting it.
Only to find there’s more, it multiplies.
How empty my life would be without it.
What a gaping hole it would leave.
And what could possibly take its place?
That’s a good question…
I’m drawing a blank.
To ‘let go’ of bitterness and resentment:
It’s an interesting concept.
I must try it sometime.
No hurry.
July 16, 2013
Citadel
Am I empty at the core or just around the edges?
Are there riches therein? I wouldn’t know.
I’m weighed down in a warm white glow,
crushing the stark yellow dullness of the day
into dust, statically and statelessly drifting
through this haze of rust. Riding the waves
of lostness across the landscape of a desk,
into the bulwark of a threadbare curtain.
John Tottenham 